Devolving

Over the past few days I’ve met with a lawyer to pursue pressing charges against Kevin and it looks like we’ve set a “mediation” appointment with him and his lawyer when he gets back from his honeymoon to see if we can reach an agreement without having to go through a trial or something really time consuming. To be completely honest, I really don’t know how I want Kevin to be punished, I just want him to be punished. I was walking to Sean’s apartment to tell him that everything was set but I picked up a newspaper on the way. When I opened it in the elevator there was a picture of Kevin and Hannah on their wedding day in the wedding announcement section. She looked gorgeous in a designer dress and there was an article underneath the picture that talked mostly about her big-wig job as a fashion consultant and her family’s money. Kevin is definitely on easy street now that they’re married; too bad he had two black eyes and a swollen lip in the picture. Heh. I couldn’t wait to show Sean, he’d probably find it as amusing as I did.

When I got to Sean’s apartment I heard him talking in his bedroom so I fed Murphy and then sat in the living room reading other sections of the newspaper. I could sort of hear what Sean was saying and I didn’t purposefully mean to eavesdrop but it was almost impossible not to.

“Man, what am I going to do? I don’t have the money for a lawyer. I’m going to end up in jail, Lou!”

I, honestly, was shocked. Sean had been playing it really cool for the past few days once the initial shock of being served had subsided. I thought he was handling things but I was wrong.

“I can’t go to jail, Lou! It will ruin my life; I’ll have to stop playing music-”

“Don’t be ridiculous, the band can’t wait for me if I’m convicted, we’re just starting to get some awesome reviews and opportunities. Plus, this guy s out to get me, man, he’s going to demand I serve time, I just know it.”

There was a long pause.

“No. No, absolutely NOT. I am NOT calling Paul. No way, man. I don’t need him to come and bail me out, just because he’s my brother doesn’t mean he’s going to do this pro-bono.”

“I think we should probably start looking for a new guitar player, to be honest. I’ll let you know what happens, but I gotta go.”

A few seconds later Sean opened his bedroom door and acted like he was completely fine. I tried to look like I was nonchalant and absorbed with the paper.

“Hey, you.” I said as he kissed my forehead and sat next to me.

“How’s the noggin?” He asked.

“Better, the doctor gave me a clean bill of health at my check-up today. You have to see this,” I said handing the paper to him with the picture of Kevin and Hannah on it.

Sean smiled and then took out the music section of the paper before handing it back to me. I let silence fall between us to see if Sean would say anything about the phone call to Lou but it didn’t seem like he was going to. I don’t think he knew I overheard him.

“So, how is everything going?” I tried to ask as nonchalantly as possible.

“Fine. Karen was able to do damage control and get us a few more gigs at that bar as well as some others at larger venues. It’s weird; she used the whole incident to kind of build up our cred as musicians but also downplayed it so we weren’t seen as a bunch of monsters.”

“That’s good,” I said, unsure of what to say without giving everything away.

We sat there and read the paper together until Sean had to go to another gig. I waited until he was gone before over analyzing everything and freaking out for him. How did everything get to this point?